SU-34: Coming after Obunga's ISIS butt buddies....

Putin’s aim is clear: to restore the principle of sovereignty to international affairs

All this may happen, of course, only if Moscow rethinks its actions in Ukraine. Because, if one insists that supporting the anti-government forces is illegal – irrespectively how that go­vernment came to power – it cannot do the same by himself. So if Russia wants to keep Bashar al-Assad in power, the West could reconsider its support for anti-go­vernment forces in Syria, but subordinate this to the withdrawal of Moscow’s ba­cking for the Donbass separatists.

Russia’s Mi-24P “Hind” attack helicopters are now operating over Syria, as clearly shown in new videos. They showed up in force with intermediate level bombing with dumb-bombs and whipping around at a couple dozen feet above the ground, popping flares and firing on, well, something, with rockets and cannon fire.

Low-level daytime attack helicopter operations over urban environments is not without its risks. Ground fire, or even an unseen power line could send one of these helicopters directly into the dirt. It also isn’t ideal as the enemy can often see and hear an attack coming.

Still, the psychological effects of having such dangerous machines prowling low overhead can be enormous in breaking the enemy’s will to fight, or at least causing them to drastically change their tactics. Still, it is likely not a matter of if, but when, one of these helicopters falls to the ground in enemy territory.

It comes at different times, and in different forms. But as they have charted the war in southeast Ukraine over the past year, drones flown by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe have run into the same problem: Russian troops on the ground are jamming them into virtual blindness.

It’s just one part of a sophisticated Russian electronic warfare (EW) effort in Ukraine that has proved a sobering experience for the U.S. Army. Faced with how the newly modernized Russian army is operating in Ukraine and Syria — using equipment like the Krasukha-4, which jams radar and aircraft — American military officials are being forced to admit they’re scrambling to catch up.

Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, commander of U.S. Army units in Europe, has described Russian EW capabilities in Ukraine as “eye-watering.” Ronald Pontius, deputy to Army Cyber Command’s chief, Lt. Gen. Edward Cardon, told a conference this month that “you can’t but come to the conclusion that we’re not making progress at the pace the threat demands.”

The electronic war was on display from the start of the Russian incursion into Crimea in the spring of 2014. Not long after Russian EW equipment began rolling into the region, Ukrainian troops began to find that their radios and phones were unusable for hours at a time. Meanwhile, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, an international conflict-monitoring group, has consistently reported that its drones watching the conflict in eastern Ukraine have been “subject to military-grade GPS jamming,” forcing monitors to scrub missions taking stock of the war below.

At the forefront of the push to get the U.S. Army up to speed is Col. Jeffrey Church, the Army’s chief of electronic warfare. But it won’t be easy. Dealing with falling budgets, a lack of EW equipment, and a force that is shrinking by tens of thousands of troops, Church says that he has managed to train only a few hundred soldiers — a fraction of the EW forces that are fielded by potential adversaries like Russia and China.

Now, it looks as though Moscow's military might be using a new type of cluster bomb in Syria. Human Rights Watch first reported these new advanced cluster bombs on Oct. 11. It's important to note that HRW was unable to confirm whether these new types of weapons are actually cluster bombs or if Russia even launched them.

But evidence supporting the theory is mounting on social media, and several independent journalists and observers have called the munitions out for what they seem to be — cluster bombs.

There there, don't cry, we're only dropping extreme bombs on the extremist terrorists; we're dropping MODERATE BOMBS on the moderate terrorists.....

Many analysts have called Russia militarily weak, with some pointing specifically to its shortcomings in air and naval forces in Syria. But based on Russia's battlefield performance so far, this assessment seems off. To the contrary, Russia has shown that it has the capability and capacity — not to mention willingness — to employ its conventional forces to achieve limited political objectives

However, the US simply does not understand that Pakistan's goals on its western border are at odds with Washington's.
Islamabad wants control over whoever comes to power in Kabul even if it is the Taliban. According to its military logic, the Pakistani army would need to fall back into Afghanistan should it be driven back by Indian forces in the event of another war.
Thus, Washington's attempt to pander to Sharif by selling Pakistan eight F-16 fighter aircraft was a serious mistake. They will only be used against India and not against terrorists.
Pakistan made no concessions during the talks and is unlikely to listen to Washington's appeals for a relaxation of tensions with India in the future.
The time has come for western assistance to Pakistan to be ended and selective sanctions against members of its establishment to be imposed. Otherwise nothing will change and tensions in South Asia will worsen further.

What would you really want??

Muslim culture still practices inbreeding and has been doing so for the better part of 1400 years. Consanguineous marriages were originally sanctioned by Islam’s prophet Muhammed, who had a very liberal view on men’s sexual relationships. In addition his many sex slaves, he married several cousins, the divorced wife of his own adopted son and the six year old Aisha, with whom he had sex with when she was nine.

A rough estimate shows that close to half of the world’s Muslims are inbred as a result of consanguineous marriages. In Pakistan, 70 percent of all marriages are between first cousins – children of siblings – and in Turkey the share is 25-30 percent.

Statistical research on Arabic countries indicates that up to 34 percent of all marriages in Algeria are blood-related as are 46 percent in Bahrain, 33 percent in Egypt, 80 percent in Nubia (the southern part of Egypt), 60 percent in Iraq, 64 percent in Jordan, 64 percent in Kuwait, 42 percent in Lebanon, 48 percent in Libya, 47 percent in Mauritania, 54 percent in Qatar, 67 percent in Saudi Arabia, 63 percent in Sudan, 40 percent in Syria, 39 percent in Tunisia, 54 percent in the United Arabic Emirates and 45 percent in Yemen. According to Dr. Nadia Sakati of King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyadh, 45 percent of married Arab couples are blood-related. The fact that many of these couples are themselves children of blood-related parents increases the risk of negative consequences........